GLASS SOUP by Jonathan Carroll (funny books to read .txt) 📕

patted the light as if it were a beloved pet. “He told me that whenever I got scared at night, I could turn this flashlight on and point it at that blue sky above me. Then I would see that the only things up there in the dark were gold stars and all of them were my friends.

“Do you know how many times I turned this on to look at those stars when I was little? Probably every night for years, and almost every time it worked. All those perfectly shaped stars. They were my friends and protected me from the dark. I rolled over and went back to sleep.”

“Try it now.”

Leni could barely contain herself. “Should I?”

“Sure—turn it on and shine it up at the ceiling.” Bob’s voice and its tone said nothing more than that—give it a try.

“Okay.” Her thumb slid to the on-off button.

“What about chaos, Bob? I thought you were going to explain that.”

“I will in a minute. Go ahead, Leni—do it.”

She switched the light on. Its beam leapt across the stage and made a vivid white circle on a far wall. She moved the beam up toward the ceiling.

“My God!”

What first crossed her mind when she saw the scene above them was one of those plastic domes you shake to make a little snowstorm swirl inside. These snowflakes are usually white, but once in a while they’re gold or silver. Now Leni felt as if she were inside a snow dome. Because her flashlight lit up a storm of a million different-colored flickers and flakes falling slowly to earth in the air everywhere above them. Astounded, she moved the light beam from here to there, back and forth, left to right across the ceiling above the stage. Everywhere the whole sky was full of glittering shining flakes.

On closer examination, however, she realized something even more wonderful—although they were the size of snowflakes, each one was actually a tiny different Victorian Christmas tree ornament. She knew that on sight because she had been a passionate collector of these ornaments for years and now recognized many as they drifted past.

On impulse she dropped her glance to Bob. The bear stared straight at her, ignoring the storm. The multicolored blizzard of ornament/flakes fell slowly down around them onto the floor. Leni and Haden kept looking back and forth between this dazzle and Bob. But the bear said nothing—it only watched their reactions.

“Put out your hands.”

When they did what immediately caught their attention was that none of the flakes that fell on their bodies remained. Any that made contact with them passed straight through their hands, knees, shoulders… and kept falling until they reached the floor. They watched these colorful ornaments fall and saw some of them touch but pass right through their bodies as if they were made of air themselves. This delighted Leni. She grinned at her empty open palm, wriggled the fingers, and said, “I guess we really are ghosts.”

For a while after she spoke it was as silent in that theater as it is on any empty street at 3 A.M. in the middle of a great snowstorm.

In time Bob spoke again. “This is how it began. Don’t ask when that was because I don’t know. Eight zillion years ago. Five trillion millenniums. Whenever. There was a big bang. In fact there have been several big bangs, but I’ll get to that in a while.

“Before it blew apart, that was God.”

“What was God?”

“Everything joined together in one grand design. That was God. But God blew apart, scattering his bits and pieces to every corner of every universe. His bits and pieces made up universes.” The bear stopped to let the image sink in before continuing. Leni found herself looking closely at the snowstorm falling all around; as if it meant more now because she knew how important a part it played in this story.

“Now imagine every one of those snowflakes is an individual life. That one is a tree and that one is a bug, that one is a person… every single flake is a distinct life. Some of these living things are intelligent, some aren’t. The bug is smarter than the tree. But that has never mattered until recently. Every thing lives its life, has its experiences, and dies.”

“Then what?” Leni spat out.

Haden was surprised by the terse way she asked the question. “Then we all come here, obviously.”

“You be quiet. Bob, then what?”

Miffed by her rudeness and the way she had dismissed him, Haden shot back, “Look at your feet.”

Until then Leni had been so captivated by the snowstorm and watching the polar bear explain God that she had not thought to look down. She did now and what she saw on the floor was startling.

The snowflakes that had fallen had formed and were continuing to form a beautiful abstract design. She had never seen anything like it before, but there was a grace and harmony to the design that was profoundly affecting. Seeing it for the first time was like coming upon an abstract painting in a museum and being so struck by its combination of balance and colors, shapes and emotional weight, that you’re held fast and stare at it in a kind of trance.

Almost as amazing was imagining that each flake of the falling snow was a life and appeared to know exactly where to go when it fell toward the floor. The white ones dropped in among the other whites, the blues into the blues, and so on. As the two people stared the layers grew thicker, the colors more vivid and complex.

“What is it?” she asked in a low, reverent voice.

“The mosaic.”

“And what is the mosaic?” She addressed Haden now because he had told her to look down and then the name of the miraculous thing at their feet. Obviously he knew what was going on. “How do you know these things, Simon?”

“Because Bob explained it to me before you and I met up. That’s why I came